France. Until now, we have known – more or less – the health state of the 45,070 classified buildings registered as Historic Monuments (MH). But what about other unprotected heritage sites? And besides, how much are these unprotected sites much more numerous? The Heritage Foundation has just delivered a few figures that allow you to have a global vision of buildings with an architectural or historical interest. There are thus nearly 76,000 monuments, protected or not, in critical state, including 67,400 unprotected or 22.78 % of the whole.
For interesting as they are, the figures of the foundation are not completely unpublished. Its evaluation of the total number of unprotected heritage monuments (295,800) is not very far from that which can be inferred from the merimed base that it has also used by completing it with data from the OpenStreetmap collaborative site and the Observatory of Religious Heritage.
As for its evaluation of sites in critical state, it only resumes the rate observed by state services for protected monuments during the 2019-2024 campaign. The Foundation takes good care and at the rate of explaining that this rate is undoubtedly undervalued, starting from the principle that the protected monuments are in better condition than the others. The fact remains that this rate of 22.78 %which brings together the buildings “in danger” (4.90 %) and the buildings “in poor condition” (17.88 %) is based on a simple visual observation above all on the clos and the cover. No survey or disassembly is carried out. In addition, the findings relate to 81 % of the monuments registered or classified; 1,026 Mh have never been inspected since the start of the campaigns in 2007.
It is therefore up to the agent of the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs to define if the building is in “good condition” (requiring only maintenance work), “average state” (requiring some catering work), “poor condition” (requiring heavy catering work) or “in danger” (presenting a danger for good or people).
If the rates are significantly the same for the four categories compared to the previous campaign, it should not be deduced that nothing changes. This is how the situation of 2008 sites has been improved while that of 1,750 sites deteriorated.
What to remember from these figures which mask very contrasting regional situations, too long to summarize here? First of all, we remember that we have overall figures which makes it possible to make a distant diagnosis on the subject. Then the situation is not as critical as certain alarmist declarations suggest. If as the Heritage Foundation does, we can apply the “sanitary rates” noted for historic monuments to all heritage sites, then more than 77 % of heritage buildings are in good or medium state. It is rather encouraging. On the other hand, these diagnoses do not allow us to assess the costs of the work that should be carried out to put the whole park in good condition. At the very least, it would be useful to constitute a base of sites in danger. It is possible for the 1,800 MH, more difficult to constitute for the 14,500 non MH.
